Mr. Cuomo has a solution

The shuffling, scrambling and general clamor at the state Capitol is the uneasy reaction of politicians when one of their own delivers on a promise.

Governor Cuomo really is serious — as serious as he was in last fall’s campaign — about taking the power to draw the boundaries of state legislative districts out of the hands of the affected legislators themselves.

That has Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, among others, very uncomfortable. Yes, Mr. Skelos ran last year — along with the other 31 Republican senators — on a pledge to implement an independent redistricting process. But now he’s saying that legislative consideration of Mr. Cuomo’s budget proposal has to take priority. So much for multitasking, then. So much for demonstrating an affinity for a work force in the real world that’s being asked to do more and more.

Mr. Skelos, we must say, seems about as excited for redistricting reform as Senate Democratic leader John Sampson was in the rather brief time his party held a tenuous Senate majority. He’s gone so far as to use the Senate’s arcane rules to stop Democrats — who now wholeheartedly support independent redistricting — from co-sponsoring Mr. Cuomo’s plan.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver isn’t so thrilled with the governor’s urgency, either. His promise to further study the issue is enough to imagine all the other good government measures that could be in place by now if such deliberation had turned into legislative action.

Enough of the same old Albany games. We can’t have another round of elections approach where incumbent legislators make the rules, custom design their districts and, for all practical purposes, pick their voters.

New York already has missed one deadline, action late last year on legislation sponsored by Assemblyman James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, that could have ended gerrymandering and jury-rigging for good. He wanted to amend the state Constitution to take redistricting out of the Legislature’s hands and put it into those of an independent, nonpartisan commission. That can’t happen now — not, that is, until the elections of 2022.

Redistricting would come under the control of an 11-member commission. No one who served in the Legislature or Congress in the prior four years would be eligible. Nor would anyone working in the Legislature, Congress or the governor’s office, or any political party officials or registered lobbyists. The commission itself would be selected by the governor and the majority and minority party leaders of both houses of the Legislature.

The commission’s recommendations for legislative and congressional redistricting still would be subject to legislators’ approval. But their ability to tinker with those recommendations would be severely limited.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, perhaps, could use some fine-tuning, particularly in the lopsided number of appointments the governor would get on the board that picked nominees for the commission. But this is a decent framework. And legislative leaders should take Mr. Cuomo at his word — that any redistricting plan that’s watered down any further will be vetoed.